Seven more people rescued in Turkey eight days after the earthquake | Turkey and Syria earthquake 2023

Seven more people have been rescued eight days after a massive earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, but hopes of finding more survivors of what the World Health Organization described as the worst natural disaster in 100 years in Europe’s 53-nation region are waning.

As a stricken UN aid convoy enters northwest Syria through a new crossing, the total death toll has risen to nearly 38,000, including 31,974 in Turkey and at least 5,714 in opposition-held and government-held Syria – a figure expected that continues to rise.

Among those recovered on Tuesday was Mehmet Kafer, 18, who was seen moving his fingers as he was being lifted from rubble in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. Mehmet Yeninar, 17, and his brother Baki, 21, were found alive in the same area.

Turkey’s TRT Haber reported that a 35-year-old woman was pulled alive from the rubble of a block of flats in the southern province of Hatay, 205 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which was followed by a strong aftershock, struck early. Monday.

However, some teams are terminating operations because subzero temperatures reduce the already slim chances of survival. The UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said the rescue phase was “coming to a close”, with the focus on shelter and food.

At a field hospital in Antakya, Turkey, one of the doctors, Yilmaz Aydin, told AFP it was “a miracle now to find a patient still alive,” and those who were saved would be “in a much more serious condition. The majority will need life-saving treatment.” “.

Across parts of southern Turkey, entire towns have become ghost towns after most of their residents fled.

In Antakya, entire streets of old stone houses, mosques, churches and a pagoda were reduced to piles of rubble and the few locals still in the city said they had only stayed to protect what was left of their homes from looting.

Cats and pigeons prowled the ruins, looking for food, and soldiers armed with automatic weapons patrolled the empty streets.

We decided not to leave the city as we must protect it. “If we leave, someone else will come,” said Özgen Cemil Kuru, who guards the entrance to his apartment, which was nearly blocked by a pile of stones from a nearby building. He added, “We will fix this. Our people are strong, we will get through it. I think our wounds will heal.”

Aid workers are facing “the worst natural disaster in the region in a century,” said Hans Kluge, WHO’s Europe director responsible for an area stretching from Greenland to the Pacific coast in Russia’s far east, adding that 26 million people need help in both countries. However, the full scale was still difficult to assess and recovery would require a “huge effort”.

Three charter flights with emergency medical kits have been dispatched to Syria and Turkey – enough to treat 400,000 people – and 22 teams from 19 countries have been deployed in the largest operation of its kind in the organisation’s 75-year history, Kluge said.

More than a week after the earthquakes, he said, there were “increased concerns about emerging health issues related to cold weather, hygiene and sanitation, and the spread of communicable diseases, with people particularly vulnerable.”

On Tuesday, the United Nations launched an appeal for $397m (£325m) to help earthquake victims in Syria. The organization’s secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, added that the world body was in the “final stages” of a similar appeal to Turkey.

In Turkey alone, an estimated 1 million people are living in tents and makeshift shelters, while at least 80,000 people have been hospitalized. Up to 5 million people may be homeless in Syria, many already internally displaced after fleeing the civil war.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday that more than seven million children had been affected by the quake and “several thousand” had died. “Even without confirmed numbers, it’s tragically clear that numbers will continue to grow,” a company spokesperson said.

“Tens of thousands of families are exposed to the elements when freezing temperatures and snow and freezing rain are common,” the spokesperson told reporters in Geneva, adding that the final death toll would be “mind-boggling”.

An 11-truck United Nations aid convoy crossed into rebel-held northwest Syria from Turkey through the newly opened Bab al-Salama crossing on Tuesday, the first UN delegation to visit the war-torn region since last week’s earthquake. Agence France-Presse said.

The team aims to assess humanitarian and food needs in an area where 90% of the population – some 4 million people – were dependent on aid even before the disaster. A Saudi plane carrying aid has landed in Aleppo and two more are expected later this week.

However, activists and aid teams in opposition-held northwest Syria have criticized the UN’s slow response to the earthquake in rebel-held areas, and contrasted it with aid plane shipments being delivered to government-held airports.

The United Nations said it welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to open two more border crossings with Turkey for at least three months so more aid could reach the northwest, where 12 years of bitter fighting have complicated international relations. relief efforts.

The leader of the White Helmets rescue group, Raed Al-Saleh, said the search for survivors in the northwest would end soon. “The indications we have are that there are none, but we are trying to do our final checks and at all sites,” he said.

In Turkey, Vice President Fuat Oktay on Tuesday denied reports of food and aid shortages. He said that “there were no problems with feeding the public” and “millions of blankets are being sent to all regions”.

Survivors and rescue workers sharply criticized the lack of emergency supplies and equipment including water, food, medicine, body bags and slings in the days following the earthquake, with many deploring the slow and inadequate response by the Turkish disaster agency.

“People did not die because of the earthquake, they died because of precautions that were not taken before,” Gudsi, who traveled to Kahramanmaraş to bury his uncle, aunt and their two sons, told Reuters news agency.

Facing tough elections this year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged problems with the early response, but initially blamed fate for the disaster and insisted the situation was now under control.

In a speech on Tuesday, Erdogan promised to launch an ambitious reconstruction plan for the entire devastated area — even before rubble is cleared from the streets. “Turkey immediately started building 30,000 homes at the beginning of next month,” he said.

Turkey’s leading business association, Türkonfed, has estimated that the earthquake could cause $84 billion (£69 billion) in losses to the Turkish economy.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

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